Saturnalia’s audio publisher is offering a 50% discount until January 27. Get the audiobook for only $10!
News
Saturnalia is coming to the UK!
I’m very excited that Verve Books is bringing Saturnalia to UK and commonwealth readers. A paperback original, e-book, and audio edition will arrive in fall 2023. Here’s some more from The Bookseller announcement:
The book was recently selected as One to Watch in 2023 by the Evening Standard, and Best Fantasy novel of 2022 by Vulture in the US.
Editor Jenna Gordon said: “The Verve team are so excited to be bringing Saturnalia to UK readers. It’s an unsettling and urgent novel that draws on timely anxieties about the future and speaks to a moment when we’re seeing people, particularly younger generations, turning to magic, fantasy and the supernatural as a means of escaping an increasingly unstable reality.”
Feldman comments: “This book is set in my hometown, but it’s about an urgent global question: how can we create a future during what feels like a slow apocalypse? I’m thrilled that Verve is bringing the Saturnalia carnival to UK readers.”
Read more here, and stay tuned for a cover reveal.
Eligibility Post for 2022
Dear friends voting on awards this year: I’m pleased to share my eligible work for 2022.
Short Fiction:
“The Boyfriend Trap” (4,800 words)
“Who do you want to be close to when you’re feeling afraid?”
Asimov’s Science Fiction, Jan/Feb 2022
–> SFWA and HWA members: email me for a PDF reading copy.
“The Annual Conference of the Ladies in White” (997 words)
“Their faces are ghastly and pretty. Their flesh hangs like fine lace. I grab my keys and run.”
Flash Fiction Online, April 2022
“The Sorcerer’s Test” (3,400 words)
“She took what came to her. What would a girl like her dream about, anyway?”
The Sunday Morning Transport, October 2022
Novel:
Saturnalia
“It’s the not the life I planned for, telling fortunes during the end of days, but clients are plentiful.”
Unnamed Press, October 11, 2022
New Reading List: “Blood on the Glass Ceiling”
Saturnalia is about many things, but one of its core questions is about how women navigate their ambition in a world that doesn’t want them to achieve. For Lit Hub, I considered my own relationship with ambition, and seven more novels about women’s dark struggles with ambition, identity, and success.
As a writer and reader, I find joy in destruction as well as triumph. If you’re a woman, you can’t win without breaking the rules.
New Blog: “Five Scary Novels That Use Setting to Embody Horror”
Just in time for Halloween season, I’m pleased to share this list of five scary novels that make the most of their settings. They exemplify how integral place is to great fiction; immerse readers in complex communities; and are creepy in classic and surprising ways. This list includes new titles and new classics, with authors and stories that span the Americas and Europe.
New Essay Series: “Writing SATURNALIA”
Today, Uncharted Magazine, one of my favorite genre publishes, released the first in my craft capsule essay series, “Writing Saturnalia.” I learned so much about plot, pace, and world-building by writing this book, and as a teacher, I’ve spent the last seven years thinking deeply about how we shape narrative. I’m excited to share this project, my first formal reflections on craft.
The first entry, “A Story Launch Thrives on an Easy Target,” explores how to use focused beginnings and clear stakes without diminishing ambitious story inquiries.
Saturnalia is about a lot of things: climate anxiety, social class, friendship and secrets, gender and power, the American city—as well as alchemy, secret societies, monsters, and pagan carnivals. All of the issues that matter to me, to us, and all of the trappings that make for a fun and atmospheric tale. My main character, Nina, grapples with society in decline, trauma, and the eternal puzzle of who she can trust.
But when the story begins, her problems and goals are simple.
Read more at Uncharted Magazine.
New Story: Beneath Human Skin
I’m pleased to share a new story, “Beneath Human Skin,” which appears in Khôra Issue 18 (October 2022). This is a rare story that doesn’t incorporate the supernatural, but I also think it’s one of my scarier pieces–here just in time for Halloween season. Here’s a little excerpt:
The cemetery gates were in sight when she heard another voice.
“Got bored?”
It was a man, sitting on the lip of one of the tombs. He had curly hair and a curly beard, both the color of lead — a shade that could have been gray or black. He was short, wiry, with shoulders that bulged in his t-shirt and veins that bulged on his forearms. She couldn’t guess his age; as he smiled, deep grooves descended from his eyes, but he was also ferociously tanned.
“Something like that,” Alicia said.
He stepped forward, held his palm open. She took a step forward, too.
It was a stick of gum.
“I don’t take candy from strangers.”
“Ha,” he said, and winked at her. He stuck the gum in his mouth and the wrapper in the pocket of his painter’s pants. “You’re a tourist.”
Read the rest at Khôra online.
SATURNALIA Event Calendar
Here it is, my fall 2022 calendar! Check the events page for updates.
Philadelphia Saturnalia Launch Party
with A.C. Wise and Gina Tomaine
October 11, 7pm
Main Point Books | Wayne, PA
Share and RSVP via Eventbrite
A Requiem for Witches at Fall for the Book
with Hester Fox
October 15, 1pm
George Mason University | Fairfax, VA
Full Festival Schedule
Cul-de-Sac Book Launch
with Nick Perilli, Daniel DiFranco, and Christina Rosso
October 21, 7pm
Arcadia University | Glenside, PA
Share and RSVP via Facebook
New Story: The Sorcerer’s Test
My new story is up at The Sunday Morning Transport! “The Sorcerer’s Test” is a fantasy-fairy tale with an edge. Tabitha, a young woman jaded from a lifetime of menial labor, gets a cushy job as a maid in a mysterious sorcerer’s house, where she finds more than gold coins–and has to decide what she wants most. Here’s a preview:
Tabitha was nursing a sour beer at the Bald Goat when Rosie opened the door. No one else in the tavern took notice of her return; Tabitha was the only one who knew about the job. Rosie hurried over, pulled her chair in close to the stick corner table. Her face was flushed, her eyes bright, as if on the edge of fever.
Tabitha felt something unusual—a flutter of curiosity. Still, she could only articulate the banal worst. “What did he do to run you off?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Rosie whispered. “Didn’t touch me. Barely talked to me.” She shifted her cloak to show the bulging purse tied against her right hip. Shifted the other side, revealed a second fat purse. “But it’ll take me ages to spend this. Figured I should get started sooner rather than later.” She paused. “And it did get lonely up there.”
There: the Sorcerer’s house.
The Sorcerer had lived in the woods beyond Creek’s End as long as anyone could remember. He rarely showed himself. For years, the only evidence of his presence was the colorful smoke slipping from the chimney and the occasional parade of shadowy figures in the forest, always drifting toward the house, never away.
Then Rosie met him among the trees, while on her way to spend a summer evening by the water. People liked to gather a half mile before the current slowed to mud and the sparsely populated town began; they liked to forget, temporarily, that they lived where the stream turned stagnant. Creek’s End.
The Sorcerer needed a maid and he offered Rosie the job. Now that she’d quit, he needed another.
“Go now,” Rosie said. “Before he finds someone else.”
Tabitha nodded. She had nothing else: no money, no work, no reason to stay, and nowhere else to go. She took what came to her. What would a girl like her dream about, anyway?
Rosie grabbed her wrist. “One last thing: Can you read?”
“You know I can read—”
“No,” Rosie said. “The answer is no. Remember that.”
Click here for more. The story is only available to subscribers, but Substack offers a free trial–and the subscription is well worth it, delivering a new fantasy short story to your inbox every Sunday.
SATURNALIA Philadelphia Launch Party!
I’m thrilled to launch Saturnalia at Main Point Books, where I launched my first novel and writing career many years ago. I’m just as excited to be joined by my friend, AC Wise, in conversation. Please join us on October 11 at 7pm! Details and RSVP here.